Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Merry Christmas to all those of the Saturday Morning Generation (and everyone else, no doubt)!

Beep!For our final installment of Christmas offerings, Mr. Miller has wrapped up a real neat treat for all you PopCereal kids to go silly over.

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If there is one thing that you ever needed to know, or cared to know, about Mr. Miller, it's that he absolutely loves Charles Dickens story "A Christmas Carol." Ever since he can remember, the 1951 Alastair Sim version of the story was a regular event at the Mr. Miller household. The local PBS station would run the holiday movie twice a year, with the first airing on Christmas Eve, and the second on Christmas day afternoon.

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Another little secret about Mr. Miller is that he's also fond of filmstrips.

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What we have here for your final PopCereal Christmas present is a recording of a filmstrip version of the great Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, produced by the Listening Library, Inc, out of Greenwich, Connecticut. They've been providing schools and other organizations with filmstrips, audio books and other audio-visual goodies for decades now, and it's always a happy day when we find one of their gems.

So, for your listening and viewing pleasure, PopCereal presents the filmstrip version of Dickens A Christmas Carol (catalog #SFX5), which includes a pdf file of the accompanying guide booklet.

Oh... and please be patient with the download. After all it's a double length filmstrip with audio read along, running nearly 40 minutes, so it'll take several minutes of your time to obtain it. We promise you -- it's weel worth the wait.

Friday, December 15, 2006

For your Christmas cheer, Mr. Miller has found a fantastic little 45 record from a pair of knuckleheads called Kenny & Corky. We haven't been able to dig any background up on these guys, but we can vouch for they're hilariousness. Side one is the dummy duo singing that bad boy standard "Nutin' for Christmas." What's so fun about this rendition is that as the mischievous troublemakers recount their terrible antics, they do it with such glee, chuckling hysterically at their naughtiness.

On the flip side the pair of pals show their more tender side, singing that sweet little chestnut about "Suzy Snowflake."

Gosh almighty, when Mr. Miller was given this record, he nearly flipped his can! Never had he heard these sweet little melodies before

Until...Check out this great download over at Check The Cool Wax. It seems that Captain Kangaroo does the same songs on the Mitch Miller 45 record... the EXACT same songs!

Mr. Miller first discovered this when he got a mix CD from a friend (the very same Christmas that he got the Mitch Miller record and put it on his own mix CD) with Captain Kangaroo doing his version of "Merry Merry Christmas." He thought it was odd that the Captain's song virtually matched Mitch Miller's version -- only the Captain did a tiny intro on his record.

Then after we got a comment in the ol' mailbag pointing out the similarities, we thought we'd better do some look-seeing around the Internets. What we found was that The Sandpipers and the Captain and Mitch Miller were well linked up, as you can see on this record sleeve art we found on esnarf.

Here... have a closer look.

Oddly, there's no mention of Bob Keeshan on any of the Mitch Miller & The Sandpiper records. Hmmmm... makes you wonder. I think Lumpy Brannum was behind the whole thing...

If anyone know more about this coincidink, please feel free to contact PopCereal. Mr. Miller here is just dying to hear all about it.